Betty's (Little Basement) Garden Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  The Story Plant

  The Aronica-Miller Publishing Project, LLC

  P.O. Box 4331

  Stamford, CT 06907

  Copyright © 2012 by Laurel Dewey

  Cover design by Barbara Aronica-Buck

  Print ISBN-13: 978-1-61188-038-0

  E-book ISBN-13: 978-1-61188-039-7

  Visit our website at www.thestoryplant.com

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, except as provided by US Copyright Law.

  For information, address The Story Plant.

  First Story Plant Printing: June 2012

  Printed in The United States of America

  “When all your desires are distilled you will cast just two votes – to love more and to be happy.” – Hafiz (Sufi Mystic)

  “The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatsoever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.” – Bertrand Russell

  After great pain, a formal feeling comes –

  The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –

  The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,

  And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

  The Feet, mechanical, go round –

  Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –

  A Wooden way

  Regardless grown,

  A Quartz contentment, like a stone

  This is the Hour of Lead –

  Remembered, if outlived,

  As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –

  First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go

  – Emily Dickinson

  Acknowledgements

  This book would never have been possible without the dedicated support and assistance of numerous medical cannabis growers, caregivers, patients, dispensary workers and owners I met during the research process. Their openness and willingness to give me access to their grow operations, as well as the numerous kitchen table discussions, were invaluable in the writing of this novel.

  I also want to acknowledge the many authors, bloggers, medical cannabis breeders and activists whose work was instrumental in gaining a greater understanding of this “budding” industry. These include Rick Simpson, Dr. Mark Sircus, Jorge Cervantes, Michael Pollan, Steve DeAngelo, Ed Rosenthal, Old Hippie, Trish Regan, author Joan Bello, the generous members of the greenpassion.org forum, Jaime from Resin Seeds and Farfel Couscous.

  Finally, thanks to Peter Miller and a huge thank you to Lou Aronica for his patience and steadfast support.

  Dedication

  I dedicate this book to my husband, David, who tirelessly went above and beyond in his support of this book. I could not have done it without you, babe. I love you with all my heart.

  And to my late father, George Marshall Dewey, whose conservative suit belied his more open-minded beliefs.

  This story is completely fictional and any resemblance to the characters mentioned in this book or their business practices is purely coincidental.

  And Betty says, “Anyone who tells you differently is sadly misinformed.”

  It was Saturday, May 1st, 2010 and everything was exactly the way it had always been…

  Chapter 1

  People only see what they are shown

  and believe the tale they are sold.

  Everything was perfect.

  Well, okay, as close to perfect as Betty Craven could conceive. And that was always above and beyond what the average person ever achieved. But as Betty so often lectured herself, perfection was an elusive bitch; just when she thought she’d manipulated all the pieces into place, some goddamned force of nature with a chaotic agenda took control, vanquishing her precise plans. Perfection wasn’t easy, but it was what kept Betty motivated. Sure, it also kept her jaw unusually tight and even popping at times from the extreme tension. And that neck pain that often paralyzed her range of motion? Yes, that was also a health casualty in her quest for excellence. Oh, and the syncopated flutter that occasionally rose up in her right inner ear that not a single doctor could diagnose, except for citing “stress” as a factor? Yes, that too was just another consequence of what it took to be Betty Craven.

  But no one saw the struggle under the polished veneer. People only see what they are shown and believe the tale they are sold. Her dearest, closest friends admired her strength and willpower. She was solid and dependable, but she was also beautiful. A former beauty queen with classic features, Betty’s curvaceous, five-foot-ten-inch frame was envied by other women, who suffered silently as they stood within her stunning orbit. Her hips, sculpted by gourmet cuisine and decadent desserts, were in suitable proportion to her voluptuous breasts that she reined in with custom brassieres. To Betty, exercise was not about cavorting on gym equipment; rather, exercise was a rousing few hours of weeding and digging in her prize-winning garden.

  At the age of fifty-eight, she carried herself well. Her blond hair – touched up every twenty-eight days like clockwork – was the same shade as on the day she stood on the stage in the middle of the football field and was crowned Homecoming Queen of Spring Woods High School in Houston, Texas. The same, suitable coif adorned her smiling face on that perfect June day in 1974 when she married Frank Craven, her military beau, at the age of twenty-three in Colorado Springs, Colorado. And nary a hair was out of place in the photos six years later, as she held Frank Jr. in her arms and gazed at the camera in an appropriate manner.

  And now, at this moment, her wavy, blond locks were still flawless as they skimmed just below her porcelain ears with their pearl stud earrings. Except for the infuriating fifteen pounds she couldn’t lose around her waist and stomach, Betty Craven still had that indefinable “it” factor. To anyone who knew her longer than five minutes, Betty was the personification of perfection. She was the woman every other woman wanted to be.

  And if she could just hold it together for three more hours – just three more goddamn hours – another day would finally expire and she could retreat into the claws of regret and her beleaguered memories. Simmering discontent best described Betty Craven lately. The undercurrent of grief had never abated since the day he died. After a few strong drinks at night, she’d often see him in her dreams. But then she wondered if they were really dreams, or if he was stuck between the worlds and destined to spend eternity navigating the tortuous maze of purgatory. From the moment he passed from this world, her body felt weighted by lead. Betty could keep up a good front, because she’d done it for so damn long. She’d trained her body to move and react with such precision that nobody would ever know the acute disconnect beneath the facade. “The Feet, mechanical, go round,” wrote Emily Dickinson, a favorite of Betty’s. “Of Ground, or Air, or Ought, a wooden way, regardless grown, a quartz contentment, like a stone. This is the Hour of Lead.” Yes, that was an ode to Betty Craven. She closed her eyes and took another anxious breath.

  The doorbell rang. Smoothing her freshly ironed, creamy yellow dress across her hips, she re-adjusted the elbow-length sleeves. If Betty ran the world, no one over the age of forty would be caught dead in a sleeveless dress or shirt. There are things you do and there are things you never do, and dammit, sleeveless numbers are verboten. Betty quickly swept the living room with her steely blue eyes, programmed to root out any un-fluffed pillow, a c
hocolate candy or delicate cucumber sandwich askew on the hand painted platters, or an errant carpet fiber that had resisted the domination of the vacuum. She adjusted one of the large featured flowers in the vase she’d grown from heirloom seeds in her immaculate garden. It was a magnificent bloom with bold orange and crimson striations. But was it too bold? Betty’s jaw clenched. Did it overpower the presentation?

  The doorbell rang again, this time with more urgency. They’d all arrived nearly simultaneously, parking their cars in her circular driveway and issuing a penetrating, humming natter outside her spotless cherry-red front door with the spring wreath on it. A wave of apprehension overwhelmed her. Would their expectations be met? Would the food be as impressive as the last get-together she hosted? But far worse, would she fail? Failure wasn’t an unknown visitor in Betty Craven’s house. In fact, failure was sitting thirty-five feet outside the kitchen door, down a short, brick path and slowly decaying in the empty, 600-square-foot, sunny space above her garage.

  And there was always Frankie, her greatest failure.

  Enough! She shook off the chatter in her head, let out a deep, authoritative breath and cheerfully opened the door.

  Chapter 2

  “Everything’s fine. No worries at all.

  Have you tried the chocolates?”

  “Welcome!” Betty exclaimed, beaming that trademark pageant smile she still knew how to skillfully manufacture on cue.

  A stream of well-dressed women entered, loudly talking amongst themselves and greeting Betty with effervescence and accolades.

  “Your house looks beautiful!”

  “Oh, look at the table!”

  “What smells so divine?!”

  Betty counted heads, instantly vexed that she hadn’t made enough food. There were twenty-five women, three more than expected. Her gut compressed. Quick. Think. She still had a large pineapple in the refrigerator. Yes, she could cut that up if necessary. Goddamnit, she fumed, why do people show up uninvited and not have the decency to give her advance warning? Spontaneity was fine, as long as it was well-planned in advance.

  But Betty kept smiling like a pro. Judi Hancock, a wiry, fifty-two-year-old high school art teacher, and one of Betty’s three closest friends, strode closer, air-kissing Betty’s cheek. As always, her red, polka-dot-rimmed eyeglasses, strung with a decorative necklace, hung around her neck. “Oh, Betty! You didn’t have to go all out for us. What a spread!”

  “It’s nothing,” Betty assured.

  “Nothing to you, maybe. You always make everything look so easy!” Judi exclaimed.

  Renée Holder brushed against Betty’s back. “A few extra gals asked to come to the meeting,” Renée stated, her tanned, fifty-five-year-old face still rosy from a game of tennis on that May Day afternoon. “It’s such an important issue, and we need to get more people involved, so I knew you’d be on board.”

  “Of course!” Betty replied with an agreeable tilt of her head. “We’ve got to get the word out, don’t we?” Guacamole. That was always filling. She could whip up a bowl of guacamole during the break and serve it with the bag of corn chips she’d stuffed in the back of the pantry. Wait, what was the expiration date on those damn chips? Betty suddenly looked around the room. “Where’s Helen?”

  “Bringing up the rear!” Judi said, pointing to the last few women entering the front door.

  Helen Wheeler steadily made her way into the living room, carefully closing the door behind her. At sixty-nine and widowed for fifteen years, she was the oldest member of Betty’s tribe and the one she could always count on to be the most pessimistic. She moved slowly and ate slowly and listened more than she spoke, but Helen was like an old couch in Betty’s eyes – usually comfortable to be around but always with the possibility of a rusty spring erupting suddenly and catching her off guard. If that rusty spring did poke through Helen’s demeanor though, any rancor was usually subdued. Anger took energy away from Helen’s preoccupation with everything that can, and does, go wrong. Helen didn’t the see the glass half empty. No, it was full all right; full to overflowing with whatever poison could kill you.

  Helen, Judi and Renée may have occasionally gotten on Betty’s nerves, but they were there for her when Frank learned he needed a liver transplant four years ago. They were still there while Betty and Frank waited for the call that never came. And finally, they were an impenetrable force field that stood by her when Frank died thirteen agonizing months after his first diagnosis. Helen, Judi and Renée were three rocks in Betty’s life and cornerstones of her faith in the power of unwavering friendship.

  “Where’s Ronald?” Judi enquired as she secured a seat on the exquisite, rose-colored love seat with the fleur-de-lis pattern.

  “Upstairs on the master bed watching television,” Betty replied, directing a quartet of chattering women to the seats.

  “Animal Planet, no doubt!” Judi exclaimed.

  Betty smiled. She would never force her fourteen-year-old, black and white cat to watch Animal Planet. It was too predictable. Ronald was upstairs at that moment enjoying The Discovery Channel, while classical sonatas played softly in the background.

  Renée nervously waved to Betty from across the room and motioned her to corral the women.

  “Everyone! Please take your seat,” Betty announced in her trained hostess tenor. “I promise you, there will be plenty of time for conversation and food at the break!” She adjusted the sleeves on her yellow dress once again and patted the back of her blond locks as she moved in front of the crowd. “Before I begin, I want to apologize for the mess at the corner of the house. I’ve got a gentleman working piecemeal on roof repair, and I know it’s unsightly.” The group regarded Betty with uncertainty.

  Judi piped up, “I didn’t see a thing, but I’ll make a point to look later.”

  Betty was flummoxed. It was an eyesore. At least it was to her, putting another damper on her bid for perfection. “Well,” she continued, “moving along. I want to thank you all for giving up a few hours on this beautiful, early-spring Saturday to listen to this timely presentation. I’m cheered to see so many people who care about our community.” She took a deep breath, hoping to tamp down any hint of her Texas lilt that tended to surface whenever she spoke in a front of a crowd. “I know as members of the Paradox Republican Women’s Group, we all share a growing concern – no pun intended, of course – regarding the upsurge of medical marijuana dispensaries and grow operations in our tightly knit neighborhood. Like you, I am…” she searched for the proper word, “disheartened whenever I see another one of these medical,” Betty rolled her eyes, “establishments taking over an empty storefront that used to house a favorite gift shop or coffee house. We are all concerned as to where this undeterred expansion of drug dens, albeit legal according to our liberal state constitution, could lead –”

  “Legal schmegal!” Renée interrupted from her perch near the front of the attentive group. “None of us voted for this insanity!”

  The group softly chuckled.

  “And with that deft interjection,” Betty continued, “I would like to introduce Renée Holder, who will help us navigate through these uncharted waters, and hopefully propose a few gems of action we can use to regain our comfortable foothold in this conventional, but oh-so-charming, enclave we call home.” With that, Betty motioned for Renée to take the helm.

  Like an impatient tigress, Renée leapt forward, and arranging her stack of notes with a nervous edge, she spoke. “Well, as always, Betty, you are blessed with a poetic command of the English language. While I might lean toward the prosaic, I more than make up for it with the real life, ‘been there and done that’ reality.”

  Betty quietly took a seat on the last available chair, a French provincial with a stunning, polished-pecan frame. Renée was right, when she admitted to not being poetic. While they were coming up with names for their Republican women’s group, Renée seriously wanted to call the group the Colorado Republican Association Political Society. Not only was t
he name long-winded and difficult to fit on the stationary, but Betty noted that the acronym spelled CRAPS. It was tough enough to hold your head high as a dyed-in-the-wool Republican in their modest but upscale city just thirty-five minutes south of Denver. If they were known as CRAPS, Betty knew the liberals would have a field day. Thus, Betty’s simple but effective proposal of the Paradox Republican Women’s Group moniker was chosen. As hard as the liberals tried, they couldn’t make any word out of PRWG, except possibly the word prig. But since Webster’s defined a prig as someone who took pride in behaving in a correct and proper way, and who felt morally superior to people with more relaxed standards, the aberration of their group’s name by some liberal malcontent didn’t concern Betty. Even three years after their inception, she still wasn’t sure if Renée held the name change against her.

  “For all the newcomers here today,” Renée continued, “I think it’s important to mention a little bit about my personal background and what I bring to this discussion.”

  Betty’s tight jaw clamped down. Good God, she thought, Renée was about to voluntarily dig up her personal dirt once again. How many times would she have to hear about the Twelve-Step Program? It was becoming tedious.

  “As a recovering alcoholic and drug addict,” Renée zealously announced, “I know the lifestyle better than most of you. I started down my rocky road of addiction with marijuana and I can tell you, as I approach my thirty second year of sobriety, that pot…marijuana…dope…grass…weed…doobie…ganja…a big fat blunt…whatever you want to call it, is a gateway drug.”